Dan Ariely’s Timeful App Helps You Better Apply Your Time
recode.net
recode.net
pg said it pretty well: "If I spent a whole day watching TV I'd feel like I was descending into perdition. But the same alarms don't go off on the days when I get nothing done, because I'm doing stuff that seems, superficially, like real work. Dealing with email, for example. You do it sitting at a desk. It's not fun. So it must be work."
If the app works well, it may be because it guides you toward the right long-term priorities instead of you getting caught up in busy work.
You'll find for example the Quadrant view, and other tools to help you stick to your goals.
The basic gist of it is to collect events (time at place, happens without you), todos and habits (things you want to do regularly) in one place, as well as nudging you with these things in the right circumstances (context awareness - they still have some work to do but it's getting there). It does this based on your custom defined sleep/work/high-focus hours, as well as what you actually end up doing (for example, completing a habit or ticking off a todo).
If you're a fan of Dan Ariely and experience problems with calendars, todo lists and all these fancy systems - and who doesn't? - definitely give it a try.
I mean, our company has two products with like a quarter million people actively using it now (2.7 million times a month), paying us real money, and I haven't found such enthusiasm among VCs yet. I am fine with that, but I always wonder what motivates the VCs and I think it's relationships, team credentials, and products have to just be somewhat believable as possible hits going after huge markets. I mean look at Color's $40M round for example. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the--did-color-raise-a-cr...
On the other hand there are teams with great potential products, but no relationships, and if they raise VC early they probably get bad terms to "get access to the old boys club" of the industry. Sort of like how talented artists discovered by A&R in the past might go on to sell millions of records but barely make anything from their first few. These days there are other options.
I wonder, does anyone know what terms Timeful got, for $7M? Did the VCs take 40% of the company? Did they make board seats and corporate governance such that they could take over at any time?
If you're looking for the app on Google Play or iTunes - it's not there. Go to to http://www.timeful.com/
That sounds like a shockingly-high amount of employees.
It might be a good concept, but there's no way to tell at this point because the app is unusable.
If you believe the scientific literature, says the Duke
behavioral economics professor and popular author Dan
Ariely, we humans have about two hours of peak cognitive
capacity, generally first thing in the morning after
we’ve fully woken up.
Who else wants that valuable data :-)
http://www.timeful.com/founders-pledge
"We hold that information in our servers...
There’s a legitimate question people raise when asked to provide personal information: “How do you make money? And does it involve selling my information or otherwise sharing it?”
Here’s our answer: We don’t yet know how we’ll make money. We believe if we are successful in helping people make better use of their time -- this most precious and perishable resource -- then they will be willing to reward us for it."
I'm not saying that all you have to do to raise funding, apparently, is be from Stanford but...well, yeah, I guess that's exactly what I'm saying.